The present invention relates to a system to provide computing services and, more particularly, to a system to provide computing services at different energy demands and response times.
Questions surrounding various entities abilities to deliver software and computing services quickly and inexpensively are likely to dominate software usage models in the coming years. In one common arrangement, a customer (i.e., user) connects to a network by way of a client computer and requests that some type of computing operation be completed by other computing resources associated with the network. For example, the customer may request that a search be completed for a given topic or that a more substantial computation is completed involving massive amounts of data. In either case, various computing resources associated with the network would be able to respond to the request. Especially in the case of requests involving substantial computational effort, the computing resources may include some resources that are capable of responding to the requests with relatively fast response times but relatively high energy demands and other resources that are capable of responding to the requests with relatively slow response times but relatively low energy demands.
In general, customers of the software and computing services have been and will likely remain interested in having their requests responded to with the shortest response time possible. However, as customers begin to look to limit their energy footprints by use of ecologically friendly products, it is likely that they may be willing to sacrifice at least some response time performance for more ecologically friendly computing or software services.